After the Family Court adjudicated N.B. a delinquent for disorderly conduct, it placed him on suspended probation. N.B., however, failed to comply with the court’s conditions. In response, the court revoked N.B.’s probation and jailed him. If under Navajo law the court could not imprison an adult for disorderly conduct, could the court imprison N.B. for the same offense?

Turtle Talk and Legal Times have written interesting first impressions of oral argument. We’ll see if we can add anything here.

What we learned from oral argument, which all-in-all went better than expected for tribal interests:

1) The Court’s two newest members, Roberts and Alito, hold narrow opinions of tribal sovereignty. The Chief Justice and Alito took the lead in peppering the Long Family’s attorney with questions and hypotheticals mostly designed to point out general problems with tribal jurisdiction over nonmembers. To this end, Roberts made thinly veiled reference to tribal legal research obstacles and how a bank could know it dealt with an ‘Indian’ corporation. And Alito even attempted to rehabilitate the Bank’s argument after it withered under attack from Scalia, Souter, and Ginsburg. But even so, neither Justice managed to drive a convincing wedge between ‘Montana 1′ and the facts in this case.

While hauling timber off of the Red Lake Reservation under a contract with the Tribe, Nord collided with Kelly. The accident occurred inside the Reservation, but on a state highway. Kelly sued Nord in the Red Lake Tribal Court. The Tribe purportedly granted the State a right-of-way for the road and the State maintains the road. If Nord is not a member of the tribe, could the tribal court exercise jurisdiction over Kelly’s suit?